Residents of a seniors home in Vancouver’s Chinatown are breathing a sigh of relief, after the learning the province will buy the building — forestalling their possible eviction.
Tim Lam, whose 90-year-old grandfather Bill Fu lives in the Grace Seniors Home at 333 East Pender, called the news “an immense relief.”
“Just thinking of all the seniors, all the families we’ve been working with, we’ve been so worried and concerned about what’s happening, we’re just so relieved to hear that our seniors can stay,” he said.
“And not only that our seniors can stay, but with this new arrangement, we’re really hoping that future Cantonese-speaking seniors, especially low income Cantonese speaking seniors within Chinatown, can use this as their future.”
Dozens of residents of the facility had received letters earlier this month telling them they would have to move out by May because the property was being sold to the non-profit Lu’Ma Native Housing Society.
Residents were later told they would be able to stay, but many were confused about what was happening, or feared they would lose access to Chinese-language programming and services.
Lam said his grandfather, who does not speak English, was terrified he might be forced to leave the cultural and linguistic community he’d spent the last decades in in the last years of his life.
On Friday, Attorney General David Eby said the province had acquired the property through BC Housing.
“Culturally sensitive housing for low-income seniors is always important. In the current environment of rising anti-Asian racism, a secure, safe and familiar residence for Chinese seniors is perhaps even more important,” Eby said in a statement.
“The building will be upgraded and operated as a seniors’ housing facility with Chinese cultural supports. S.U.C.C.E.S.S. will operate the building, starting on June 15, 2021.”
Eby and Lam both expressed gratitude to the Lu’Ma Native Housing Society for agreeing to the deal. Eby said work was underway with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to buy another property for Indigenous people facing homelessness.
But Lam said the incident highlighted the dwindling stock of housing available to the region’s non-English speaking seniors.
“If Grace seniors home was to shut down, that would cut 20 per cent of the senior housing stock within Chinatown just with that one blow,” he said.
“A lot of the other Cantonese-speaking senior homes have multi-year wait lists. And we knew a lot of these seniors just didn’t have enough time to wait for another home like that.”
He added that he hops the experience is a lesson to the provincial government about how vulnerable non-English speaking seniors are to the system.
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